by Alan Bern
Over the town, Marc Chagall, 1918
Grounded in the accumulation of
aimless wanderings, we merge into
one another. Our limbs perform a
waltz of boundless extensions. A
buoyant embrace. This aerostatic
love, fixed on the canvas like a
time-stamp of a single decision to
drift in the gelid atmosphere of a
moment. A journey away from the
world. And so our bodies are
recurrences of each other, the
painting perpetually detained in its
own pigments, its own purpose.
Except, none of this is exact.
Truth be told, you are not looking
at me and I am not looking at you.
The hope in the picture lies in us
both remaining where we will
always be, in love, in stasis,
enthralled.
Fran Fernández Arce is a Chilean poet currently living in the intersection between Suffolk, England, and Santiago, Chile. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Pollux Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, and Firmament, among others. She is a poetry reader for The Walled City Journal and poetry editor for Moonflake Press.
Retired children’s librarian Alan Bern’s poetry books: No no the saddest and Waterwalking in Berkeley, Fithian Press; greater distance and other poems, Lines & Faces, his broadside press with artist and printer Robert Woods, linesandfaces.com. Among Alan’s awards: his poem “Boxae” was first runner-up for The Raw Art Review’s first Mirabai Prize for Poetry, 2020, and he won a medal in 2019 from SouthWest Writers for a WWII story set in Italia. Recent photos: unearthedesf.com/alan-bern-2/, pleaseseeme.com/issue-7/art/alan-bern-art-psm7/, mercurius.one/home/alanbern. Alan performs with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Weaver as PACES: dance & poetry fit to the space and with musicians from Composing Together, composingtogether.org.